


weren't you something

by saudadeonly



Series: in a world three degrees north [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Attack on the Mckinnons, But technically, Death Eater Sirius Black, F/F, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Post-Hogwarts, not really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23330623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saudadeonly/pseuds/saudadeonly
Summary: Marlene McKinnon learned a long time ago what kind of casualties war brings. She doesn't need a reminder in the form of Sirius Black.And yet.
Relationships: Marlene McKinnon/Dorcas Meadowes, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sirius Black & Marlene McKinnon, Sirius Black & Minerva McGonagall
Series: in a world three degrees north [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592227
Comments: 8
Kudos: 112





	weren't you something

**Author's Note:**

> I... I just have too much time. So much, in fact, that I rewrote this about 5 times. If I don't get this online, I'll kick myself.
> 
> As always, remember to check out the other works!

_July 1981_

The grandfather clock in the McKinnon residence strikes nine o’clock just as Marlene McKinnon brings out the cake, decorated with exactly seventeen candles. She tried to light them with the Muggle lighter Lily gave her but her scorched fingers quickly compelled her to use her wand instead.

Felicie exclaims in delight when she sees the cake adorned with blueberries—her favourite. Their mother spent all morning making it while Marlene lounged around the kitchen, pretending to be of help. Still, that’s more than their dallying brothers did, so.

“It’s gorgeous,” she exclaims, her blonde ponytail swishing behind her as she bounces in spot. The four-leaf clover necklace Marlene gave her glimmers around her pale throat.

Marlene grins, carefully depositing the cake on the table, around which the entire McKinnon family is gathered. Her three brothers—Pip, Theo, Matthew—their parents, and Mum’s father. Even Dad’s parents have come, after having sworn to Marlene that they would keep any lifestyle-related and lifetime-partners-related remarks to themselves. So far, they seem to have stuck to their end of the deal so Marlene’s smile doesn’t diminish when it passes over their old faces.

“Thank you, mama.” Felicie leans forward to blow out the candles but Pip, as he was dubbed by one-year-old Marlene who could not yet say his full name Phillip, tugs on her ponytail and pulls her back. “You know the rules,” he says, pointing to the clock on the wall, while the rest of them nod sagely.

It’s a foolish tradition, as Felicie doesn’t hesitate to tell them, but the McKinnons have always been adamant about the rule that one can only blow out candles only when it’s the time they were actually born. It tends to be impractical and has been so on many occasions, but Marlene adores it still, foolishness and all.

The arm on the clock moves to the second line and Felicie blows out the candles with a grin, while the rest of them cheer. The smoke swirls up, creating a mist around her sister, and Marlene’s heart constricts at the childish delight on her face. She still has a year left at Hogwarts, another year when they can try and shelter her from the reality of the outside world that Dumbledore works so hard to keep from them. Marlene hopes that once Felicie’s finished, she won’t have to hear about it at all.

Of course, her sister always has been brighter than most and has made it abundantly clear that she knows what they’re trying to do and that she finds it stupid, but appreciates it nonetheless. Marlene studiously ignores her every time she tries to bring up the Order. Her brothers, for once, seem to be doing the same as her.

“Alright, now the best part,” Felicie says as their mother reaches for the knife, brushing her blonde hair, the same as Marlene, Matthew and Felicie’s, out of her face. And at that moment, as Marlene looks over her family, her heart feeling like it might crack apart with the love she feels for these people, it all goes to hell.

At four minutes past nine, exactly two minutes after Felicie’s birthday, the door at her back explodes into splinters.

Marlene has her wand in her hand before she can blink, as do Matthew and Theo, but the Death Eaters are faster.

They spill into the dining room, silver masks like stolen starlight, spells shooting out of their wands before they’re even fully through. They throw all of them back with a single unanimously-cast spell, knocking the breath clean out of Marlene’s chest. The wall she hits is cold, the impact with it a hard collision with reality.

One of Death Eaters’ spells hits their mother and she crumples like one of the puppets Marlene and Pip used to play with. She didn’t even get to reach for her wand.

“Mum!” Pip reaches for her, but he’s too late and he narrowly avoids a jet of green light. His retaliating curse is a swift, cold reaction, the impact of which Marlene never gets to see because she’s forced to throw up a shield to deflect a jet of sickly purple light.

It gives her enough time to jump to her feet, breath be damned, and shoots off a curse of her own. It feels off, _she_ feels off, the floor beneath her feet not steady enough, her hand lacking the fluidity it usually possesses.

The offending Death Eater doesn’t seem to be deterred by her spells, which is another contributor to the sleek, heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach, and his attack pushes her back into the living room. Another two join his efforts and a cold sort of realisation comes over Marlene. They’re trying to separate them. They’re trying to separate her from her family.

The world seems to fade from view. No. No.

She spins her wand, fights a little fiercer, a little harsher but it’s little use—most of her spells are deflected by one or another, or seem to cause so little damage they find it laughable. One of them hits her side, tearing a long gash down the side of her ribcage.

“That is a new top,” she gasps out as she twirls her hand and sends him flying back several feet. The world seems a little blurrier, then, but she manages to make two consecutive spells rebound off her shield. She chances a look towards the dining room, where her family of eight is surrounded by nearly twice as many Death Eaters and fighting a losing battle. But at least they’re fighting.

That little glance costs her—her shield seems to lose its potency and when one of the Death Eater shoots a disarming spell at her, it passes through. Her wand slips out of her grasp, flying uselessly towards the couch.

Marlene chokes on a laugh when a dark stream of light knocks her back, sending her crumpling onto the floor. After all this time, after so many successful missions and won battles, this is what gets her. A disarming spell, a second of diverted attention. Dorcas will be so disappointed. Marlene is glad, suddenly, that Dorcas politely declined the invitation to come, claiming to have a duty for the Order; that she is far away from this, even though Marlene was furious about her flimsy excuse only hours ago.

Her side burns, her lungs can’t seem to draw in enough air and she can’t move but all she can focus on is the fact that the sounds of fighting have stopped. There is only raucous laughter and laboured breathing. Marlene dreads the moment that stops too.

She has no time to think about it further. A Cruciatus hits her and she trashes as the pain spreads along her body, seeping into her muscles, twining around her bones. The world blurs and then sharpens, focusing on that single thing still existing in her—pain, all-consuming, vicious. She screams and screams and yet she finds it in herself to be grateful that no one else is screaming with her. That she, not her family, is their focus. Then, as abruptly as it started, the pain stops.

Someone stands over her. His hood is drawn up, his mask firmly in place but Marlene knows he’s grinning anyway. “Well, would you look at how the mighty have fallen,” he says. His voice, rough and muffled, is familiar; but then, they all are these days. If she were to remove his mask, chances are she would know whoever is underneath it. Travers, maybe. Nott, Dolohov, Macnair, one of the Lestranges are all as likely. He crouches down, runs a hand down the side of her face. Marlene wishes she could bite it. “I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on you.”

“Going to have to wait for a bit longer, Travers,” says a voice just a little bit farther away and this time it is familiar for a whole different reason. The footsteps that approach them are soft, measured. “Go find someone else to play with. I have a score to settle with her.”

Travers—her guess being right brings little satisfaction—hisses, “I got here first.”

“Oh, Travers, don’t you know that in the company of women, you shouldn’t boast about coming first?”

A part of Marlene, a small, tiny part wishes she could see Travers’s face just for that split second; it would bring so much satisfaction before the imminent pain and death. The rest of her coils in dread when he grumbles and moves away from her—but steps toward another body instead. A body with a blonde ponytail and a limp hand outstretched towards Marlene. As if her sister wanted to reach her before she was cut down.

Felicie’s eyes are big, their blue sea-rich, and she doesn’t take them off Marlene as Travers steps over her and reaches for her neck, the necklace there now painted red. She lets out a small sound, somewhere between a whimper and a sob as Travers’s hands roam lower.

“No,” Marlene says, twitching toward her sister. It doesn’t do anything—the spell holds and Marlene is stuck in place. She tries again, her own bloodied hand reaching out to Felicie. Felicie’s fingers twitch. “No, please, take me instead, please, please.”

A figure looms and Sirius Black crouches over her, hiding her sister from her view, although she can still hear Felicie, her pleas. He’s smiling, but his eyes are cold. He brushes back a lock of her sweat-damp, blood-matted hair, tucks it behind her ear. “No, worries, Marlene,” he says, voice midnight-soft, “you’ll get your turn too.”

A guttural scream tears through the house. Pip is begging as they torture him, Marlene’s heart screaming with him. Pip, her Pip, her brother, who pushed her off swings and tugged on her hair and told her stupid jokes when their grandparents’ hate cut too deep, too personal. Pip, who is dying.

“Please,” she whispers again to Sirius’s blank face. She remembers a time when that face was the most expressive thing she had ever known, full of rage and pain and razor-sharp joy. She hates the memory of it more than this face before her because that one was only a mask, a lie. “Please, I’m the one that you want.”

“We want all of you.” His voice is as cold as his hand that he slips under the hem of her top. Marlene can’t stop him from it, just as she can’t stop the screams that have now joined Pip’s. A tear trickles down her face as Sirius points his wand at her. They’re all going to die and it’s all her fault for insisting they have a proper party for Felicie’s birthday. She just wanted a day of normalcy for her—for all of them.

Their eyes meet, but the indifference she finds in his is too much and she closes her eyes, goes deep inside that part of herself, just as Moody taught her, and waits for the pain to come. At least she can keep the information to herself. At least she can do that for the Order. But the pain doesn’t come.

Instead, there’s a voice. _Mack. Mack, can you hear me?_

Marlene opens her eyes. She looks at Sirius but his face remains impassive, his lips unmoving, just as his voice continues on the outskirts of her mind. He doesn’t try and delve deeper, even though she feels the power behind the weak barrier she’s thrown up that tells her he very well could.

She nods, the shock getting the best of her. No one’s called her that in years.

His hand is on her hip, but it does not reach lower or higher. Instead, his thumb circles her hipbone in a way that is strangely reminiscent of the way he used to comfort her during that crazy week in seventh year they actually thought they could sleep together and ignore their respective pining. _Good,_ he says. His voice is softer than she’s heard it in years, or maybe ever, full of weariness and barely-there strain. _I’m going to get you out of here but you need to listen to me. You need to do as I say._ It takes a lot of effort for him to talk to her like this, she realises when he pauses. She can feel herself nod again. Then he orders, _Scream._

Marlene doesn’t spare a moment to think why this might be a colossally bad idea. Her family is already dying and she is about to be tortured for information. Playing along with whatever Sirius is trying to get at seems like a way to appease him, at least, if it turns out he’s only messing with her in the end. Although the sincerity in his voice, the pain underlining every word make her doubt he is. So Marlene takes a slow breath and channels all her hate, all her fear, and pain into her lungs—then she screams as she did only minutes ago.

As her throat works itself raw, Sirius bends down low over her, his head nearly touching hers as she writhes. “Your wand is just a bit to the right and up from you,” he murmurs into her ear. His hand holds tight onto her hip but not enough to hurt her. An anchor, she thinks, holding her there, to keep her from slipping away. “Can you reach it?”

Marlene’s fingertips brush the smooth polished wood of her wand when she uses her thrashing as an excuse to move herself an inch closer to it. If she had an extra second to throw herself toward it, she could potentially succeed. “Yes,” she whispers, her throat too raw from the screaming to be able to do much else.

“Good. Grab it and throw me back.” He straightens and points his wand at her as he says, voice again loud and cold, “ _Crucio_.” She tenses but while there are the power and the command for the spell, there is no intent behind it so her body doesn’t even twitch. She takes the hint anyway and lets another shriek rip out of her. He lowers his voice again, his lips barely moving, and says, “The whole house is surrounded with anti-apparition wards but there is a spot, by that gnome with the blue hat that isn’t covered. Go there and disapparate.”

Someone else’s screams echo through the house. Her mother’s or her grandmother’s, Marlene isn’t sure. Maybe both. Others have been drowned out by the Death Eaters’ laughter, their cold mocking voices. She thinks she hears Bellatrix’s high notes among them, taunting one of Marlene’s brothers. Marlene hates all of them. When she finds out who they are, she will kill them, one by one.

“Sirius, please, my family—”

This time, his voice is drowned out by Felicie’s scream, but there is a touch of pain in it now, a splinter embedded in the lowest of undertones. Marlene’s chest hurts, her doubt increased by a fraction. “They’ll be okay, Mack, I promise, but I can’t blow—”

Marlene surges up and butts her head against his, with as much force as she can muster. It makes her head ring and small flecks of light swim in and out of her sight, but it also makes him shout and stumble back, clutching his nose, giving her enough time to throw herself toward her wand and grab onto it. She doesn’t know if she herself that turns or her wand that does it for her but in the next moment it is pointed directly at Sirius as she shouts, “ _Expulso_!”

Sirius is blasted back, directly into Travers, knocking him clean off Felicie’s body. Marlene hesitates, wanting to run to her sister, but there is no way she can take on fifteen Death Eaters and end up any different than she was seconds ago. Marlene bolts for the back door, holding tightly onto her wand, and tries to ignore the way her whole left ribcage burns with the effort. She hears the thud of heavy footsteps behind her and pushes herself harder. _Come on, come on, comeoncomeoncomeon._

A jet of red light just sails over her head when she throws the back door open and slams it shut behind her. She stumbles down the steps, barely managing to keep her balance on the stone still slippery from the rain earlier in the afternoon, her heart beating a staccato into her ears, her blood, her belly. She uses the stairs’ newel to propel herself around the corner and runs toward the blue-hatted gnome at the end of the row of her mother’s lilies. She throws herself on the ground and skids toward it, just as someone tries to grab her. She thinks there are too many stars above her, swimming too close, and she doesn’t recognise the constellations.

The small spot free of anti-apparition wards is like a breath of fresh air, the sizzling from her skin gone for just a moment, the pain thrumming all over replaced by one single thought. _Dorcas, Dorcas, Dorcas._

The momentum of whoever was behind her causes him to stumble forward and she can see him clearly as he manages to stop himself in front of her. Sirius’s hair is mussed, blood gushing from his nose and down his front and she knows he will have to suffer for this, but in the split second it takes for her to disappear, she can swear he’s smiling.

*********

Marlene wakes up in a room that has become far too familiar in the past few years. The walls are white, the covers of the bed are white and generally everything is white. The perspective is different, though, as she’s spent most of her visits to this kind of room sitting in the bedside chairs rather than in the bed itself. Dorcas dozes in one of those chairs now, her hand loosely wrapped around Marlene’s, her brown-black ringlets mussed around her head.

She stirs when Marlene shifts, her side throbbing painfully, and shoots up once she finally registers her movement. “Lene,” she breathes, moving as if to lurch forward and hoist herself onto the bed beside her but then seems to remember herself. She settles for squeezing her hand, so strongly it’s almost painful, but Marlene wouldn’t have her let go for the whole world. “How are you feeling?” she asks, her thumb rubbing soothing circles into the back of Marlene’s hand.

Marlene’s mouth is dry, for one. Her head is pounding, her side is burning and she feels like she’s been run over by one of those Muggle lorries, for two, three, and four. “Great,” she says instead of counting them all off. Or rasps, more like.

Dorcas gives her a distinctly unimpressed look and reaches for her wand without a word, flicking it to conjure up a glass of water. Marlene drinks until she feels she might burst and puts it down on the bedside table. 

Dorcas stays quiet until then, her eyes just a ring of clear brown around a pit of black, her fingers over Marlene’s trembling. “I was so afraid I’d lost you,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to the back of Marlene’s fingers, her palm, the inside of her wrist.

“Never,” Marlene says but her voice shakes, her throat burning with the knowledge of how close to it she’d actually come. Then, with the clearing of her head, she remembers. “What about my family? Did they—”

“They’re alive,” Dorcas hastens to say, saving Marlene from finishing her sentence. She gives her a reassuring squeeze, though a shade of worry still darkens that lovely face. Alive does not mean okay, Marlene reminds herself and braces herself for the news she is about to receive. “Your mum and your Da’s parents—it’s still touch-and-go, Lene. It’s been a week, but—” She shrugs helplessly, biting her lip. Marlene’s grandparents have never been particularly kind to Dorcas, because of her blood status or because of her skin or because of her gender, Marlene hasn’t figured out yet, but the worry on Dorcas’s face despite it makes her heart squeeze. There was a time she thought she would never be lucky enough to be loved by someone like this.

“Can I see the others?” She needs to see Felicie and Pip and Theo and Matt and Dad and Grandpop—she needs to know if the flashes she has of them are true, or worse. She doesn’t let herself guess.

Dorcas shakes her head. “The healers haven’t let anyone in yet. Potter had to pull some considerable strings to get me in here at all.”

“Oh.” The disappointment of being denied seeing her family and the worry of what state they’re in feels like a weight in the pit of her stomach but it’s alleviated a little by the warmth of Dorcas’s hand, at least. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Dorcas smiles, but it’s shaky at best. It is, Marlene reflects, kind of like she herself feels; turmoil underneath her skin, singeing through her veins. “Marlene,” she says, her name like a prayer on her lips, “Marlene, what happened?” She swallows, the line of her elegant neck bobbing with it. “How did you—”

“Good morning, love,” says a mediwitch as she breezes into the room, easily recognisable by her pale blue robes. “Good to see you finally awake. You’ve been out for some time.” She gives her a friendly smile as she touches Marlene’s forehead. “No fever. How do you feel?”

Marlene shrugs. “Okay,” she mumbles. She doesn’t particularly care for hospitals or mediwitches.

The mediwitch doesn’t seem discouraged. She only taps her wand against Marlene’s head, her side, her thigh and says, “You were in quite a shape when you arrived.” Well, Marlene will have to take her word for it. She can barely remember her arrival at the hospital, beyond the blood gushing from more than one separate place, and the pain thrumming through every part of her body. She thinks someone told her she’d Splinched herself. She isn’t even sure how she managed to come here. She opens her mouth to ask either one of them but the mediwitch goes on, “You seem much better now.”

“Well, we are in a hospital,” Marlene points out, relishing in the familiar feeling of warmth when Dorcas hides a smile behind her hand. She remembers a time when Dorcas’s smiles were few and far between, like small trophies every time she coaxed one out of her. Lately, they seem to be getting rarer again.

The mediwitch only gives her another smile, a little indulgent. Then she shoves a few potions at her, only one of which Marlene recognises. Memory potion. She’d ask why she needs it but then she couldn’t ask, “How did I get here?” She dutifully drains it, then the other two, while the mediwitch and Dorcas exchange a look. It tastes like metal, like blood. Marlene reaches for her glass of water.

Dorcas opens her mouth, but another voice says, “I believe I will be able to answer that question the best.”

Minerva McGonagall’s face is as stern as it’s ever been, though with more lines than Marlene has apparently cared to remember, her black hair threaded with more grey than it should be.

“Professor McGonagall,” Marlene says, well aware that she’s been out of school for over three years. The compulsion has never stopped, not with Dumbledore, not with Flitwick and apparently not with McGonagall either.

“I’d like a moment with Miss McKinnon, please,” McGonagall says, with a glance at the mediwitch that conveys why-are-you-still-here better than Marlene could have managed it in a speech and a pointed look at Dorcas. “Alone.”

The mediwitch, done with her job, scampers off (Marlene wonders if McGonagall was her professor, too; she certainly looks young—and scared—enough), but Dorcas, less easily intimidated, draws herself up and meets McGonagall’s eyes with her chin up, a look that’s always made Marlene want to kiss her.

“I’m not leaving her side,” she says. Her eyes narrow. “What do you want with her, anyway?” Dorcas has certainly never shared her difficulty of giving their Professors anything else than what she thinks they deserve. It’s what earned her so many detentions back at Hogwarts.

“That is between me and her.” McGonagall gives her a look over the rim of her spectacles. “You will recall, Miss Meadowes, that I was the one that brought Miss McKinnon to St Mungo’s. I certainly don’t intend to cause her harm.”

Dorcas purses her mouth, her jaw ticking, but Marlene can read her well enough to know that she’s slowly backing down. She squeezes her hand and brings it to her mouth, giving her a shaky smile that takes more effort than she wants to admit. She doesn’t know why, but she wants to talk to her old professor alone. She has a feeling it’s important. The potion she took only minutes ago seems to be telling her the same thing.

“It’s okay, Dorcas,” she says, quietly enough that only Dorcas can hear her. “I think I’d like some tea, if you don’t mind getting it for me.”

Dorcas studies her for a minute, her brown eyes dark. She has the most intense eyes Marlene’s ever seen and most of the time it’s a goddamn blessing but right now Marlene just feels like she’s searching for a truth Marlene can’t give her. “If you’re sure,” she says at last, slowly standing up.

Marlene only nods.

Dorcas presses a kiss to her forehead, her lips soft though a bit dry, and walks out the door with one last sharp look at McGonagall.

As soon as the door closes behind her, McGonagall swishes her wand in a movement that Marlene recognises to be a silencing charm. Then she looks at her, one eyebrow raised, lips thin. “Aren’t you going to ask me a question?” she asks.

“Oh. Oh, er—” Marlene grapples for words, silently glad that Moody isn’t here. He would’ve had her hide. “What did you say to me after I punched Wilkes in fifth year?” She adds, that compulsion getting the better of her, “Professor?”

A hint of a smile appears on McGonagall’s face. “’Next time, at least do it while I am not looking,’” she says, which is correct and absolutely one of Marlene’s favourite memories. She toasted to McGonagall’s health a week afterwards. “What was the first thing I gave you detention for?”

“Hexing Lily Evans’s hair pink.”

“Correct.” The smile slowly fades from McGonagall’s face as she comes to sit in the chair beside her bed, next to the one Dorcas occupied. Her face offers no clue as to why she’s here, her eyes rather too intense to have a calming effect. “I wanted to commend you,” she says slowly, “for the exceptional show of your bravery and magical talent that allowed you to escape the Death Eaters’ grasp and get help for your family.”

Marlene raises an eyebrow. Something is not right, something about her expression and her posture—too high-strung, even for her. “You came all the way here and sent Dorcas out just to tell me that, Professor?” she asks. Her voice is getting hoarse again as she reaches for the glass of water, thanking Dorcas silently that she charmed it to be self-refilling.

“Well, it’s no small feat,” says McGonagall, “what you managed. Escaping unaided from a house full of Death Eaters.”

Marlene blinks. Her memory tells her differently, a nagging voice whispering that there was something—no, there was someone. “But I didn’t,” she says with more certainty than she feels. “Escape unaided. At least, I don’t think.” She shakes her head. “You found me?”

“I did.”

“But I—when I Disapparated,” she says slowly, the memories trickling in almost in time with her words. The details are still blurry somewhere, but she remembers it in peculiar flashes. An explosion. A wall against her back, making it impossible to breathe. Cold grey eyes, accompanied by a warm voice. Felicie, on the floor, bloodied, a dark figure over her. Pip, screaming. The gnome with the blue hat and stars above, her lungs straining for air. And then—pain, voices, someone trying to calm her down, _Miss, you’re alright, you’re safe, you hit your head_. “When I Disapparated, I thought of Dorcas. I’m sure. I thought of her and I ended up—” She looks around the disgustingly white room, breathes in the smell of potions and healing magic. She’s certain she didn’t think of this the moment she disappeared from her house. “—here.”

McGonagall sighs. “I should have come before they gave you that memory potion,” she says, sounding almost tired, “but Rowena always has been cheerfully efficient.”

Marlene glances at her wand, lying on the bedside table, as if it might offer any explanation to McGonagall’s words. It stays painfully quiet.

McGonagall runs a hand over her face, in a rather uncharacteristic show of humanity. “He should have confounded you, but then you might have been unable to escape and I don’t dare to obliviate or confound you now. It would be too suspicious. And all that magic your body’s been subjected to—” she shakes her head, then looks up at her, her eyes far too sharp for Marlene’s liking. “Do you remember, Miss McKinnon, what happened the night the Death Eaters attacked your family?”

She breathes in deep. “More or less.”

McGonagall’s voice is soft, as if she is afraid of being overheard; even here, even surrounded by a wall of silencing charms. “Then you remember what Sirius did.”

Sirius. They had been Sirius’s eyes, his voice, his hands, she’s sure of it. She knew he had been there, in an abstract sort of way. It makes sense that he was _—_ he is, after all, Voldemort’s right-hand man.

A memory surges up, unbidden, his voice soft but firm, _They’ll be okay, Mack, I promise, but I can’t blow—_

She hit him then, she can remember that much, but she can venture a guess as to what he was going to say. _My cover._ Realisation comes slowly at first, then all at once and Marlene’s brain struggles to review all the events it’s catalogued in the past years. She can already feel a headache coming.

Sirius, on the King’s Cross, eyes bleak, his parents’ figures like looming statues just meters behind him. _Be safe, Mack._

Sirius, in the square, standing before them with his hand steady, but his eyes like shattering diamonds.

Sirius, one of the best wizards of their year if not the whole decade, missing them or using spells that are child’s play in comparison to the rest of the Death Eaters’.

James’s words, unsteady, unsure, _He could have killed us and he didn’t. He just—left._

“You—he—he’s a spy,” she whispers, the weight, the deliberateness of his actions finally so, so clear. He got her out. He pretended, he faked, he made sure she escaped.

“Not exactly a spy,” McGonagall says, her cheeks hollow. “We have an understanding. I’m the only one that knows.” She takes off her hat, puts it in the chair beside her and folds her hands back in her lap. “You must understand, Miss McKinnon, what I’m about to tell you cannot, under any circumstances leave this room. Sirius risked more than his life getting you out of there. If anyone were to find out—” The rest of her sentence hangs unspoken but clear.

Marlene can only nod.

McGonagall sighs. “While he was pretending to torture you, Sirius put a spell on you.” His hand, Marlene remembers, resting on her hip. She thought it an anchor. Not too far off the mark then. “It’s a complicated spell, and all the more difficult for having done it wordlessly and under such duress. The spell essentially made you a kind of portkey, ensuring that when you Disapparated, you would end up here.” She gives Marlene a funny look. “Of course, neither one of us expected that your will would be so strong it would fight the spell. You Splinched yourself, partly perhaps because of your physical state, but luckily you didn’t go far. I found you a block away, but you were barely coherent by then. I knew what was going on so I didn’t have to demand information from you. I merely took you in and left you in the care of healers. And I went to the Order headquarters.”

Marlene understands suddenly, with razor-sharp clarity. It was a risky plan, almost every step of it imbued with the possibility of going awry, but all the more brilliant for it. “You were waiting for me,” she breathes. “You needed to find me so that you could have the excuse to tell the Order. To not endanger Sirius. Or me.”

McGonagall nods. “Sirius had sent me a Patronus right before they left for your house. If I had passed the information on immediately, everything Sirius had worked for would be gone. The Order might have also doubted me.”

Marlene exhales a long breath of air. It’s a lot to take in in under five minutes, not to mention with a pounding headache. “But Dumbledore—”

“Sirius didn’t want to involve him,” McGonagall says briskly. Her mouth thins, her eyes darkening. “He wants nothing to do with the Order. And I don’t blame him for it.” She adds, softer, almost gently, “Sirius can be trusted. I will bet my life on it.” Her voice leaves no room for argument and despite herself, Marlene believes her. She leans forward, somehow still managing to keep her posture impeccable. One day, when all of this is over, Marlene will ask her for lessons—it will make her mother thrilled. “No one can know, Miss McKinnon, what he’s doing.”

“And the Death Eaters? They don’t suspect him?”

McGonagall shakes her head. “So far, he hasn’t given them a reason not to. You-Know-Who takes him for his most loyal subject.”

Marlene shudders at the thought of what exactly Sirius had to do to achieve that kind of title among the fiercest of supporters. Just to have received the Dark Mark, he had to have ripped his heart out. She can almost hear his laugh at that, bitter but more bark than bite. _I don’t have a heart, Mack,_ he would say while slipping a cigarette between his lips, lighting it with the tip of his thumb. _My mother took it away long ago._

“He had to pay for letting you get away, of course, but he is fine now,” McGonagall says. Her voice, the pain in it slowly disappearing, lowers. She cares about him, Marlene realises, as much as any of them do. “As far as you know, Sirius tortured you and you barely managed to get away. No one, not even Miss Meadowes, can know about what truly happened.” Her eyes are dark. She’s always been a no-nonsense sort of woman, strict but fair, not gentle, but never unkind either. It is the first time Marlene sees a different kind of edge to her. “If you don’t intend to agree, I am not above obliviating you.”

Marlene’s heart constricts at the thought of keeping anything from Dorcas. She hasn’t done so since their seventh year when the biggest secret she had been keeping from her was that she wanted to snog her senseless. Doing this would feel like lying, like cheating. But Sirius—

Sirius’s gap-toothed smile from behind his mother’s robes while his parents and her grandmother were talking. He rolled his eyes behind their backs when her grandmother said something particularly vile and their friendship was solidified forever.

Sirius’s grin when he was Sorted into Gryffindor, bright and brilliant, but with just with enough of a tremor that Marlene wondered if she was the only one that could see the dread beneath.

The prank war and the havoc they wreaked when they teamed up in fifth year, ending themselves in detention for the rest of term, but laughing themselves into oblivion anyway.

A cigarette, just the one between the two of them, the smoke just beginning to drift out of his mouth when she finally got enough courage to utter the words. _I think I’m bent._ His answering huff of laughter, not harsh at all, but as gentle as his hand on her shoulder when he drew her in a hug. _Aren’t we a pair._

His arms around her, the two of them spin-spin-spinning around an empty classroom, as he sang, horribly loud and off-key, until her sobs turned into laughter, until her cheeks were wet from tears of joy, until it was just another dance with Sirius, amazingly coordinated, easily in-sync, as it had always been.

“I know it’s not an easy decision to make,” McGonagall says.

But that’s just it—it’s so easy it scares her. It’s no decision at all. “I’ll do it. I will. I promise.” Her voice sounds far away to her own ears, but it doesn’t tremble.

McGonagall blinks. “Very well.” A second of silence. “I’m glad. And I’m glad you’re alright, too.” She places her hat back on her head and stands up, brushing off non-existent lint from her emerald-green robes. She presents an impressive picture, like she always has, but the line of her mouth, the set of her jaw don’t seem as firm as they once did. Marlene wonders if she is just as afraid as she is, as all of them are, but decides it must be just the blow to the head talking. “I hope you and your family make a full and quick recovery, Miss McKinnon.” she says and walks towards the door.

“Tell him thank you,” Marlene gets out before she can open it. McGonagall stops but doesn’t turn. “For all of it.” She swallows. “I will not let him down.”

“I know you won’t, Miss McKinnon,” McGonagall says, an edge of a smile to her lips, and walks out.

Dorcas comes in only moments after McGonagall’s left, her beautiful ringlets mussed all around her face, her t-shirt rumpled, a little colour now returned to her face. She’s lost weight, Marlene only now notices. Because of her, Marlene, because she was worried about her. And somehow, the sight of her sleep-deprived, tea-carrying form is simultaneously the most beautiful and heart-breaking thing Marlene’s ever seen. She feels a lump in her throat, her eyes burning. 

Dorcas’s face crumples. “Oh, Lene, oh, love,” she whispers and crosses the space between them to throw herself onto the bed beside her. (The tea somehow ends up on the bedside table, unspilled.)

Her body on Marlene’s is a weight that is definitely not helping her injuries but Marlene doesn’t care and just wraps her arms around her and pulls her closer. Dorcas smells like dry leaves and chamomile tea, but, as if the hospital has sunk its claws in her as well, like sleep and the bitter smell of potions, too. Marlene burrows closer to breathe her in. She hopes Dorcas can feel the words she wants to tell her, but simply doesn’t have the courage to say, in the kiss she presses to her neck, in the strength of her arms around her, with every breath of air against her skin. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I love you, I won’t ever go again._

“It’s okay, Lene,” Dorcas whispers, her hand carding through her hair like she understands. Then again, as if she’s trying to convince herself as well, “It’s okay.”

But it’s not. It’s not okay and it won’t be for some time. But the promise of a new tomorrow that the feel of Dorcas in her arms brings, the newfound knowledge of Sirius, the sight of the sun, shining clear and strong, is enough to make her think that someday it will be.

**Author's Note:**

> Marlene and Sirius deserve to be childhood friends. Think of the potential.


End file.
